I’ll admit, I was a bit dubious when Student Honors Council first brought up “Honors Weekend,” and told us that we students were going to plan it. However, I will say, I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would.

​Thursday’s Trivia Night was one for the books. We had multiple teams vying for the top, including a team from News & Notes. The front desk staff even got in on the game. Some RAs were even bribing us to do well with DeHo Dough. Our competitiveness was apparent— some screamed out answers, while others scribbled furiously on white boards. We all enjoyed ourselves, and laughed about our competitive streaks and need for speed afterwards.

On Friday night, we occupied the DeHo beach with our Fall Fest. We had a photo booth, a cookie decorating table, popcorn, music, and face painting. I don’t know about many others, but I was able to meet a few faces from DeHority that I hadn’t seen before, and I enjoyed that the most.

We brought out our competitive streaks once more on Saturday. That evening consisted of a friendly game of Capture the Cardinal, which was a spin-off of Capture the Flag. Since the original plan didn’t pan out as we wanted, we ended up bending a few rules and negotiated the point system. But hey, flexibility is an important soft skill to have, and we had blast attempting to chase down our “cardinals” anyways.

We concluded Honors Weekend with Sunday’s brunch, which consisted of burritos and corn hole. Again, I was able to meet more unfamiliar faces from the Honors College, and played corn hole with my wonderful friends.

I didn’t create a summary of every event because I thought News & Notes readers would like to read them, but because each night had something very special behind it: students. Because most of us are freshmen, we were able to hold committee chair positions, help set up, tear down, and manage booths and tables that needed attending to, an opportunity incoming students rarely get. Organizing and leading these events were totally up to us, rather than leaving it up to other older Honors students.

That’s the one of the biggest things that sets Student Honors Council apart from any other organization on campus. Anywhere else, we freshmen and sophomores are usually lumped in with “underclassmen,” and often stuck with a label on our foreheads, reading “young” or “follower.” SHC teaches us how to remove the stereotypical label, and replace it with one that says “leader” and “enough.” I think all of us in SHC were able to take away a very important lesson of leadership and responsibility from this weekend.